[xubuntu-users] Package manager error

[Peter Flynn]

On 01/26/2013 02:40 AM, Phil wrote:
> Thank you for reading this.
>
> An error icon (a red circle with a white bar through the centre) is
> showing on the status bar that, when clicked on, pops up a message that
> reads, in part:
>
> "An error has occurred. Please run Package manager from the right-click
> menu or run apt-get in a terminal to see what is wrong."

I get a very similar error on a 12.10 system (upgraded over many years 
from 9.something). The error message asks if I want to report the error, 
but if I click Yes, it then spins its wheels and says it can't identify 
the package, and then dies. This pops up about twice a week.

I think I have finally traced it to a manual installation of hplip under 
11.04, at a time when the selection of printers installed in the cups 
package was horribly out-of-date. This should now long since have been 
superseded by cups in 12.10, but I suspect the old HP-supplied package 
is tenaciously hanging in there. As it was installed by their script 
from the command line, I have no idea what the package name or names 
were, so short of a complete wipe and reinstall of 12.10, I'm just going 
to let it pop up and die...

[David]
 > We need to know what you're trying to install.

This would not have been useful in my case: I need the *system* to tell 
*me* what package it thinks is causing the problem :-)  Is there a way 
of making automated package manager errors much more verbose, so that I 
can see what its problem is. Kind of the config file equivalent of 
telling PM to lie back on the couch and tell me its deepest internal 
worries...

///Peter